Quote:
Originally Posted by tapar
The thing I think most people are forgetting is that publishers would probably be perfectly happy if you never bought another ebook again. I would expect that they would rather have ebooks die out and stay out of the mainstream so they can continue on like they have in the past with paper books. If ebooks become honestly mainstream and people get used to all the convenience of reading ebooks, piracy will probably be a bigger issue/concern for them. It also disrupts their business model and will basically cause a big upheaval.
If ebooks are only a small percentage of their business now...sabotaging them might keep it that way so they can cling longer to the old models. I think that would be really shortsighted but it wouldn't surprise me if that kind of backwards thinking were at play here.
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Exactly and that is in particular MacMillan's tact on this. They don't want their ebooks in libraries and they want the price to be the same as the hardback on release or to not release the ebook til later. They are doing everything they can to kill ebook sales and perpetuate the status quo of the hardback. This will increase piracy I have no doubt.
Oh and it's not the authors that have much control over this at the moment, it's the publishers, the author typically only gets a pittance of the money, most goes to the publishing corporation and the shareholders. It's ridiculous.
I think the one-star ratings and comments directed at the publisher, the refusal to buy higher-priced books, and email,forum,twitter,blog deriding this behavior is appropriate.